The Best Shampoos for Color Treated Hair

The Best Shampoos for Color Treated Hair
July 24, 2010 By: manager Category: Uncategorized Edit

The American Board of Certified Haircolorists, of which I am a member, is an independent organization with no ties to any manufacturers. The ABCH recently tested several brands of professional (sold in salons) and retail (sold in stores) shampoos to determine which brands performed best for color retention. The 10 professional brands tested ranged in price from $9.99 to $37.99 retail. All swatches used to do the testing were made of yak hair that was consistant in texture and color. Yak hair colors very much like gray human hair but has no undertones or varied porosity to make the test unbalanced. All of the swatches were colored a deep burgundy, as this is a color that fades most readily. Each swatch was saturated by a different shampoo and left to soak for one hour. Then each was rinsed in warm water and left to dry naturally. This process was repeated five times until there was no residue deposited on the white cloth where they were left to dry.

The best shampoo based on the least amount of hair color removed and the most reasonable price per ounce was Aquage, at a price of $.83 per ounce, followed by Wella
which retained the same amount of color but placed second because of the $1.08 per ounce price. Back to Basics and Redken followed in 3rd and 4th place, followed by Goldwell, Graham Webb, Biolage, TiGi Catwalk, and Joico. The shampoo which performed the worst by removing the most color was Kerastase which, ironically, had the highest price of $4.46 per ounce.